Latest / The BioHub - by Avetix / Episode 61 - Rick Winningham – CEO Theravance

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Episode 61 - Rick Winningham – CEO Theravance · The BioHub - by Avetix

0:05
Welcome back to another episode of the Biohub.
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Today I'm joined by Rick Winningham, CEO of Theravance
0:12
Biopharma, a leader who has shaped the biotech and pharma
0:15
landscape for decades. Rick has been at the helm of
0:18
Theravance since 2001, guiding the company through major
0:22
strategic pivots, industry shifts, and groundbreaking
0:25
developments. With a career including 15 years
0:29
at BMS, he has LED blockbuster drug launchers, billion dollar
0:33
partnerships and key industry initiatives.
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In this episode, we'll dive into the evolution of the industry
0:39
and how it shapes decision making at Veravance, the impacts
0:43
of China and India in biotech, the tough market conditions and
0:46
how to navigate them, and what it takes to inspire the next
0:49
generation of biotech leaders. So great to have you.
0:53
Thanks for coming on, Rick. Thanks.
0:55
Thank you. Very excited about today.
0:58
Yeah, let's let's dive into it. So first of all, it might be
1:02
good just to give a bit of a brief snapshot on on who
1:05
Ferravance are. Sure.
1:07
Ferravance Biopharma today is a is a commercial stage
1:12
biotechnology company. We market one product in the
1:15
United States, a medicine to treat COPD, sometimes called
1:19
emphysema. So you know, we're strong
1:22
financially. We've got cash in the balance
1:24
sheet, as I said, not burning much money.
1:27
And we have, you know, line on a lot of milestones, cash
1:32
milestones from programs over the next 12 to 18 months.
1:37
Yeah, that's, that's awesome. And then like if we just look at
1:42
your, your journey and your story and then also what, what
1:46
spired you to pursue a career in biopharma and ultimately come on
1:50
to fair advance? Yeah, that's, that's a great
1:53
question because I, I was actually talking with somebody
1:56
about that this week. And the, you know, when I joined
2:01
Bristol-Myers, I was, I was working in consulting for a
2:05
major consulting firm and I, you know, was asked to join
2:11
Bristol-Myers. And I, I, the sophistication of
2:14
my analysis was basically, you know, delivering healthcare in a
2:20
pill or delivering healthcare in, in a shot or injection.
2:25
That had to be a good thing to do because you were going to,
2:29
if, if you did that, well, you were going to keep people out
2:33
of, of high intensive labor environments like hospitals.
2:39
So that had to be just big picture economically.
2:43
That had to be a good place to work in.
2:45
And then, you know, I thought, wouldn't it be, wouldn't it be
2:49
cool to actually be involved with improving healthcare at
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scale? And, and it would be something
2:58
if I got involved with and I, and I was lucky enough to, to
3:02
spend my career doing it, you know, I could look back and say,
3:06
wow, you know, I, that was good. I, I did something and I kind of
3:10
left the place and better, better than I found it so.
3:15
Yeah. I think you know, like you get a
3:19
lot of people in this industry who are like very mission
3:23
driven, like you, you, you ultimately massively fit into to
3:27
one of those which you've just seen through throughout the time
3:30
at Veravance. Yeah.
3:32
And I think, you know, the, the decision to come to leave
3:36
Bristol-Myers, which is a company that I really loved and
3:40
I was in AI, was running oncology at the time and
3:43
virology. And it was a dream job for me
3:47
because of what we could do, do for patients.
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And come to a very, you know, startup company in South San
3:56
Francisco was an incredibly difficult decision.
4:01
But I was going to go to work for a guy, Roy Vagelos, who who
4:07
I had, who I'd seen run Merck and who was a real just
4:12
phenomenal leader with a strong sense of symptom of what's
4:19
right, how to, how to do things the right way.
4:22
And so I came to Theravance, not only because I, I wanted to put
4:27
Mark on my, you know, Mark and working with people on on other
4:31
medicines, but I came to work. I came to work at Theravance
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also so I can learn from a doctor.
4:37
Vagelos And I just thought that, you know, that would be a great
4:41
thing to be able to, to take away some learnings from, you
4:45
know, one of the people I thought was a real giant of
4:49
giant of industry. Yeah.
4:52
I think that's an interesting topic as well, like that
4:54
mentorship aspect. And you know, you also joined
4:58
the company for not necessarily the technology, but but the
5:01
people like 100%. Yes.
5:04
And I think we that the basic technology, there was an edge
5:08
there in the technology, the, the chemical insight that that,
5:14
that we could potentially lever to discover and then develop
5:19
medicines and create and, and the work of creating a culture
5:24
of a company where there wasn't really a company.
5:28
And the ability to to work with not only Doctor Vagelos, but
5:32
work with and then hire in extraordinarily talented people
5:37
that were, as you said, very mission oriented, very mission
5:41
focused and, and driven by the ability to create new medicines
5:49
and, you know, leveraging this inside.
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And it was a, you know, it was a terrifically exciting another,
5:55
another person, another joined with me.
5:58
In fact, his name was Pat Humphrey.
6:01
He was the most cited pharmacologist in the 1990s
6:04
because of his work on five HT and or serotonin.
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And Pat and I decided to join Theravant simultaneously.
6:14
We were having lunch and in Princeton and Doctor Vagelos
6:19
thought it would be a good idea if we got together.
6:22
And because he was trying to recruit Pat, who was a head of
6:25
who was a research background, and me who had commercial and
6:28
some development experience. And, you know, we basically
6:33
agreed I would go if Pat went and Pat would go if I would
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because we had complementary skill sets.
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And he was another, you know, another person that I could
6:43
learn from. And not only that, but he was a
6:45
person who could teach others who who could teach, you know,
6:50
young scientist, young chemist, young biologist, how what the
6:54
process of discovery was and how to discover and create new
6:59
medicines. And you know, without, without
7:02
Pat's imprint on the company and without his leadership, we would
7:06
have never become that the and been able to do the drug
7:10
discovery and have the success that we've had.
7:14
That's amazing. But let's, let's just talk about
7:17
like what's happened more recently, specifically pursuing
7:22
A niche and, and, and the rare disease market, what, what's
7:25
behind the strategy and also how does it tie to, to the returns
7:30
you want to create for your shareholders?
7:32
Yeah. So I think today and, and it's
7:35
not just today, but in the recent past and in the future,
7:39
you, you have to, you have to be able to find a niche.
7:45
We're in the, in the market where you can compete in a
7:49
superior way. You know it 1520 years and 20
7:53
years ago in particular, maybe 25 years ago, you know, that
7:57
wasn't that much of A requirement because the industry
8:01
wasn't as competitive as it is today.
8:05
Payers weren't didn't have the influence that they have today.
8:09
But, but today and in the next 10 to 15 years, certainly if you
8:14
can't identify a niche with your medicine where you could, you
8:18
think you can outperform everyone else.
8:22
And in fact that you have, you have created a medicine such
8:25
that you can have that niche by yourself for a period of time
8:30
and not have competition. You will not, you know, by and
8:33
large you will not be successful.
8:35
You have to have a superior technology, and then you have to
8:39
define the niche that you're going to compete in in a
8:43
superior way such that you will not face terrific competition.
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Because if you get 3 to 4 players in a given niche today
8:52
in a commercial market, they'll begin to put pressure on price,
8:56
returns will decline, and you'll find yourself in a very
8:59
difficult position as a company. That's such a good point.
9:04
I suppose, like from an outsider's perspective, it's not
9:06
something I always think of. At the moment you're running a
9:10
global trial in a rare nearer indication you know NOH in
9:15
patients with MSA. What?
9:17
What are the challenges of of benefits and benefits of doing
9:20
so? Well, I think that the benefits
9:24
of of running a global trial as you get to go throughout the
9:28
world and find in in a variety of countries, the very best
9:34
investigators, the very best people that understand this
9:38
given disease and in fact can manage can manage the patient in
9:44
the study and after the study. You know, that's that's the
9:47
benefit. So it's an access to fantastic
9:51
the best of the best in investigators who have chosen to
9:54
dedicate their lives to the treatment of this disease.
9:58
And then you the patients. I mean that such that it's a
10:02
rare disease. So you need to cast your, your,
10:07
your strategy a bit wide to make sure that you can recruit enough
10:11
patients into your study to accomplish your clinical
10:14
objectives. I think that it, it takes, you
10:18
know, and it still takes a lot of focus and a lot of effort
10:21
because again, we're a, we're 100 people in that 100 people at
10:25
Paravance. We part of those people are
10:28
commercializing medicine for, for COPD in the United States
10:32
and the other part are really in development drug development,
10:36
running the clinical trial for amploxatine.
10:40
But those people that are working clinical development, we
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don't have a large CRO. We're, we're going in and out
10:47
and working with these investigative sites around the
10:49
world and it's a Theravance employee that's really going in
10:54
and building a relationship and building the ability to work
10:57
with these sites. Now I think that's good because
11:00
that gives us a tactile feel of the challenges that the, that
11:05
the physicians have in treating these patients, the challenges
11:09
that the patients have with this disease.
11:12
I mean, I've just spent a month in Europe going, going to the
11:16
UK, Spain, Italy, Austria, visiting clinical sites.
11:23
So I could both work with work with the investigators, make
11:27
sure that we were addressing all the needs that they had so they
11:30
could optimize their work on our study.
11:33
And also for me to learn really what are the issues that they're
11:36
having with, with the treatment of the disease just upfront and
11:41
personal and without that tactile feel.
11:44
I think of a disease, particularly rare disease.
11:48
It, it, it doesn't enable you to optimize the strategy big
11:52
picture wise. So you know it, it's a challenge
11:55
to run a rare disease study around the world.
11:58
But I also think that there's great benefits if you're willing
12:02
to put the time in to engage with one-on-one with these
12:06
investigators around the world and learn the challenges that
12:11
they have in dealing with their patients.
12:14
I love that. I think it's really, really
12:16
interesting and fairly unique. And kind of coming back to your
12:20
point about being mission driven, it really, you know,
12:23
that is that is it. And then I often hear when
12:28
you're in the rare disease space, you know, it, it's
12:31
sometimes hard to, to really get the motivation to, to be like,
12:36
why are we doing this? You know, if you're working in
12:38
oncology, everyone's known someone who's affected by by
12:42
cancer and you don't often have that in, in rare disease.
12:45
So if you're doing something like that, you you get it
12:48
basically. Yeah.
12:49
And I, I, you know, I have a, you know, not so unique, but,
12:54
you know, my father, my father died of multiple system atrophy
13:00
and he had severe neurogenic orthostatic hypotension.
13:05
So I, I sort of began this journey, you know, unfortunately
13:10
with an understanding of what the disease is and the challenge
13:14
that it has for patients and their caregivers, you know, the
13:18
people that are trying to care for them each and every day to
13:21
get them through a 24 hour period.
13:25
And I, you know, that that's connection that doesn't even
13:31
further enhance sort of the mission driven nature of what we
13:36
do. I I think, I think to be in this
13:38
business to do what we do, you, you have to put the patient at
13:43
the center. I mean, you it's, it's a must
13:46
because if you don't, you'll end up making little incremental
13:50
decisions that are bad and that eventually, you know, don't help
13:55
your company to be successful. But if you keep the patient at
13:58
the center and you keep making the right decisions for the
14:01
patient, whether it's helping them with reimbursement, whether
14:05
it's help, considering that you've got to communicate with
14:09
not only the patient, but the caregiver, you know, that helps
14:12
you to be successful. So.
14:16
I think that's awesome advice. Like I always think the dynamic
14:20
of biotech is, is absolutely fascinating in the fact that,
14:23
yeah, you know, people are in it to, to make the world a better
14:27
place. It's patient focus.
14:29
But also at the end of the day, you've got these shareholders
14:32
and, you know, it's a business. And like, I was at JP Morgan for
14:37
the first time at the start of the year and, you know, it
14:41
really started to click in my head that like, yeah, these
14:44
people are also smart and they're so science driven and
14:46
but they're entrepreneurs and they're, you know, it's, it's a
14:51
crazy dynamic when you break it down.
14:54
Yeah, you have to get, you have to get a return on investment
14:58
for your shareholders. You know, that has to be your,
15:01
your objective. And it's a, it's a very, it's a
15:04
business that's filled with uncertainty because you know,
15:09
you're, you're taking a in, in almost all instances, you're
15:13
taking a product, a chemical or a protein or something and
15:18
you're putting it in a human being.
15:20
And that's novel. That has not been done before,
15:23
and it takes an extraordinary set of of experience to take it
15:29
from, you know, the bench to to the marketplace and knowledge of
15:35
a seer of different people with different skill sets, knitting
15:39
them together to enable that you to enable them to be successful
15:43
at eventually delivering this medicine.
15:45
And again, to your point, you've got to you've got to deliver
15:50
value for your investors. And hence my point about today
15:54
you have to define a niche where you can compete, where you can
15:59
deliver something of value that nothing, no one else can
16:03
deliver. For example, our COPD medicine,
16:06
you Pellry, it is the only once daily long acting mascarinic
16:11
antagonist, which is gold standard therapy to open up the
16:15
lungs or help people to breathe better.
16:18
It's the only product that's delivered in a nebulizer like
16:21
that. So now it's now nebulized
16:25
products only make up about one in 10 COPD patients.
16:29
But you know, that's OK because there won't be another product
16:34
like this that enters the market.
16:36
So as long as we can meet the needs of that one in 10 really,
16:41
really well, we won't be. We will be successful with you
16:44
Calorie and our partner will be successful.
16:47
Likewise amploxatine and treatment of MSA, the treatment
16:51
of NOH and MSA patients, there's one product here that can do
16:56
that. And if we can be successful in
16:58
treating this, these NOH patients with MSA better than
17:03
anything else, then we will, we will earn a return that's very
17:07
attractive for our shareholders. But we've got to meet that
17:11
patient need to do that, yeah. 100% And I want to bring it back
17:17
to to the industry. You know, you've obviously been
17:23
at Farivance for a long time, but been part of the biotech
17:26
industry for a long time. Like what's potentially
17:30
surprising to you regarding the current environment and, and do
17:33
you see it as like a, as a challenge or a potential
17:36
opportunity as well? Well, I think the expanding
17:40
knowledge of the expanding knowledge of, of biology and
17:44
disease processes and the number of things, number of different
17:47
tools that we can use from gene therapy to small molecules to,
17:52
to achieve better healthcare. I mean, I, I think that's
17:55
incredibly exciting because you know, even even with 9095% of
18:02
prescriptions that are written in the United States being
18:04
generic, there's still a terrific opportunity to improve
18:08
care with new technology, building on knowledge that of
18:12
the biology that's, that's, that has been emerging over the last
18:16
20 years. So, so I think that part of it
18:19
is exciting and I think the competition it's, it's never
18:22
been more competitive as I said than it is today.
18:26
Not only competition in product markets, but competition in the
18:31
capital markets for for money in order to accomplish what you
18:35
need to do and the the ability to earn a return for
18:40
shareholders that you have. So, you know, what's the
18:44
financial success of this industry has brought has brought
18:48
a lot of capital into these into these markets, which has created
18:53
a lot of competition. I mean, it is a it is an
18:56
absolute example of of what happens in a capitalist economy,
19:02
which is, you know, profits invite more investment and more
19:08
investment eventually makes it drives more competition and it
19:13
gets tougher and tougher. But you can still, if you
19:16
identify that need and you're the best in class in meeting it
19:20
and you support your patient, you still can deliver returns
19:24
and do things that were unthinkable, you know, quite
19:28
honestly 2025 years ago with regard to healthcare delivery.
19:33
Yeah. And you know, coming out of JPM
19:36
as well, China was was quite a big topic of conversation.
19:40
And like you just said there, they've kind of jumped on that
19:42
opportunity of, you know, potential gaps in the market.
19:48
What, what's your view of the country's impact on on global
19:51
biopharma innovation and how, how does that change potential
19:56
decision making within the industry as well?
19:58
It's extraordinary. It's extraordinary because the
20:02
amount of capital that's been dedicated to biotechnology in
20:08
China and. I think that you know, when,
20:12
when you look at the last 10 years, you had a massive up
20:16
regulation of capital, you know, in the in China being dedicated
20:20
to the industry. And then for several years you
20:23
had a massive up regulation in overall in the capital markets
20:27
with all this, you know, with the with the biotech bubble and
20:31
all this money flying into to biotechnology to try and create
20:35
new companies. So you have those two elements.
20:38
And China has, has now gone from, you know, copying, you
20:43
know, by and large a great base business of, of, of generics to
20:49
now a driver of innovation and a source of innovation for the
20:54
rest of the world. I mean, more and more products
20:57
that are sold to the United States are likely to be licensed
21:02
from Chinese companies, Chinese research organizations that have
21:06
in fact discovered them and done the initial biology.
21:09
So I think that I think it's very exciting.
21:12
It puts a real premium on excellence in research because
21:17
you got a, you're competing with a much, much bigger market for
21:21
research than what you were doing 20 years ago.
21:24
So you know, I think that it's, I think it's been a positive
21:28
move. Obviously it's going to benefit
21:31
patients tremendously in, in terms of innovation for China
21:36
and China will support innovation.
21:38
That's the thing. As they innovate there, they
21:41
will want a higher and higher premium for intellectual
21:45
property and I think that will be good for other innovators
21:49
around the world. Does that change decision making
21:54
across the industry there and just the success that's come out
21:57
of China? It it does, yeah, I think it
22:00
does. And in fact it even changing the
22:02
decision making, you know what Theravance as long as 1010 years
22:07
ago where you know, you could see this happening.
22:10
I can remember talking to the our head of research at the time
22:14
and, and we were seeing this massive amount of capital that
22:18
was planned to go into the company creation and innovation,
22:24
both universities and companies in China.
22:27
And we thought, you know, there is going to be an extraordinary
22:30
pool of innovation that can be tapped into, you know, 10 years
22:35
from now. Well, what does that mean for
22:36
research that's done in the United States?
22:39
Well, it has to be much, much, much better today than it was 10
22:44
years ago in order for it to compete.
22:46
And it made it tougher for, you know, organizations like their
22:50
events in research to compete with the overall global market.
22:56
I mean, where you have to make decisions about where are you
22:59
going to be competitively superior.
23:02
And for us it became a choice really of we were going to be
23:06
competitively superior in taking the medicines that have come out
23:10
of our research organization and and developing them in a way in
23:15
niche, in niche markets to satisfy patient need.
23:20
And that's where our emphasis needed to be, you know, over the
23:24
last five plus years and that's what we've that's what we've
23:27
done. But you know, innovation from
23:29
China is going to provide innovation to the world and
23:32
innovation to a lot of companies who pick it up and develop it
23:35
further. Yeah.
23:37
And and also just like talking about decision making beyond
23:41
what's happening in China and the innovation coming out of
23:44
China, does the current market and the potential struggles
23:47
across the current market affect your decision making at fair
23:51
events as well? The struggles, you're always
23:55
going to have struggles. I mean, you know, you're, you
23:58
know, it's your capitals going to be easy to get that it's
24:01
going to be hard to get, you know, it goes through different,
24:04
different cycles. So you do have to plan for, you
24:10
have to plan for uncertainty and you have to do everything you
24:13
can in the, in the execution of your strategy, business strategy
24:18
to, to aggressively manage that uncertainty where you can to
24:22
reduce the risk for your company.
24:24
So, so yes, I think that, you know, all across the board, the
24:30
changes that are happening in industry, you have to take that
24:34
into consideration when you're executing your, your corporate
24:38
strategy. You have to take it into
24:40
consideration when you're, when you're staffing your company,
24:43
when you're hiring your company. One of the things one of the
24:46
issues that has occurred because of the biotech bubble and a
24:50
whole host of companies getting started is that it created an
24:55
extraordinary demand on, on talented labor.
25:00
And in fact, you had, you know, all these new companies that
25:03
were being formed, all of them, depending on where they were,
25:06
they needed great either great chemists, great biologists,
25:09
great drug metabolism people. And in fact, there there were
25:14
not that it wasn't that magically the supply of those
25:18
great people increased the supply in that short a period of
25:22
time didn't change at all, but the demand went up
25:25
significantly. So you had a bit of dilution,
25:29
you know, of talent because of the domain, the labor demand for
25:33
all these, all the talented people that you have with all
25:36
the companies that have been created.
25:39
And it took, it takes a period of time to get all of the, you
25:44
know, depending on your speciality to get a group of
25:47
people up to where they can actually perform at an
25:51
extraordinary level and develop, you know, to develop them.
25:54
And I think this dilution of talent that happened in the
25:57
biotech bubble was real. And it's, it's probably
26:00
contributed perhaps to somewhat of a lower success rate in, you
26:07
know, across the board because many people were learning, OK.
26:11
And and I think now the industry, there's no question
26:14
over the next 5 to 10 years is going to benefit from that
26:17
because, you know, people have got the hard earned scars of
26:21
different challenges that they faced and overcome and they'll
26:25
be ready for the next, you know, they'll they're it's more likely
26:29
that they'll take the next piece of technology and make it
26:31
successful. Yeah, isn't that it's?
26:34
Amazing. Yeah.
26:36
Yeah, I think so. And and do you see like a
26:39
potential catalyst that would move us forward in like the next
26:43
12, four, 1224 months in terms of the whole industry?
26:48
You know, I, whether it's a single catalyst or not, I, I, I
26:52
continue to believe that the pressure on diseases of the
26:57
aging and particularly diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's
27:01
disease, we've kind of treated those diseases a bit differently
27:05
than we did cancer. From a public policy
27:08
perspective, You know, in the 90's, the NCI doubled their
27:12
budget twice over a period of 10 years, Significant investment.
27:17
Rick Klausner and, and Harold Varbas leading those.
27:20
The NIH and the NCI made terrific investments in the
27:24
understanding of the basic biology of cancer, and they did
27:28
that because the government stepped in and funded an
27:31
extraordinary amount of basic research that then the industry
27:35
can take some of this basic research and begin to develop
27:39
new products. Now, most of those products
27:41
fail, you know, because that's the nature of the industry.
27:44
But some of them were successful.
27:46
And those successes built on each other in camp, in the
27:50
therapy, cancer therapy. That is not what's happened by
27:53
and large with diseases of the aging of the central nervous
27:56
system. We haven't had that bolus of
27:58
capital come in at on basic research.
28:01
It's more dribbled in over time now.
28:05
I think that it will, I think people will finally realize
28:08
that, Oh my gosh, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease is
28:12
having a negative effect on gross domestic product.
28:15
We've got to fix these diseases and the way we fix them is
28:19
investment in research and then investments in medicine to to
28:23
treat them. So I see that as a potential
28:26
catalyst. Yeah.
28:28
I mean, we're all hoping for it, definitely.
28:32
Yes, we're hoping for it. Yeah.
28:35
Can we just look back at your career as well?
28:37
I just want like 1 moment that that'd be, I think pretty
28:41
exciting for, for people coming through the industry to hear
28:45
that, that would, you know, contribute to the way you think
28:48
and your success. You know what 11 moment that you
28:54
know what might have been, you know, early in my career when
29:00
Bristol-Myers licensed in a drug called Taxol to treat cancer,
29:08
eventually treated ovarian cancer, breast cancer, non small
29:11
cell lung cancer, Kaposi sarcoma, etcetera.
29:16
And, and, and the choice to to license this product in from the
29:21
NCI. It was a difficult choice
29:23
because there was like no guarantee and it was really made
29:27
based on a single partial response in an ovarian cancer
29:31
patient and that one patient that had been treated with
29:34
everything that there was, which wasn't much at that point in
29:37
time. And but yet Taxol and they
29:40
treated it with Taxol had side effects to it, but they saw a
29:44
partial response. And it was on that strike, the
29:47
partial response that that the company made the decision to
29:51
license the product in to reformulate to to find a way
29:56
because there was no way to manufacture the drug at scale at
29:59
all. It had to be completely started
30:02
the manufacturing from scratch from the Pacific Yew Tree, from
30:06
bark from the Pacific Yew Tree. So bark had to be gathered out
30:10
of the Pacific Northwest, gathered by the ton to be
30:15
synthesized into paclitaxel raw material.
30:18
So and it was all based on this partial response in an ovarian
30:24
cancer patient that a really smart person said, you know
30:28
what, that's unique. We don't see that and you know,
30:32
it lined up, it lined up, you know, billions of dollars of
30:36
investment and it lined up a medicine that eventually
30:40
extended survival in ovarian cancer, metastatic breast
30:44
cancer, adjuvant breast cancer and non small cell lung cancer.
30:48
So that, you know, that was, I remember that moment like it was
30:53
yesterday because somebody just said, listen, there's not much,
30:58
but we need to go after this and we may be able to do something
31:02
very special. I love that.
31:05
Yeah. And then look, finally, just to
31:08
finish, it's a question that we ask all our guests.
31:11
I think you've got a bit of time to think about it as well, Rick.
31:13
So if you could have dinner with any scientist or innovator, past
31:18
or present, who, who would it be and why?
31:21
Well, I think it'd probably be Isaac Newton, you know, one
31:26
because I'd probably only get like 20 minutes, you know, of
31:30
his time. And I would probably only have
31:33
the chance to answer, ask him to, to try and understand how he
31:38
thought about things, how he saw what he saw that that ended up
31:44
translating into, you know, really the basic understanding
31:50
of how are, you know, the universe is put together.
31:54
And, you know, I, I just think 20 minutes with him, one, one
32:00
line of something of how he saw the world and what it was that
32:04
made him think about X would be, you know, incredibly valuable.
32:10
I agree. I think that's an amazing
32:12
answer. And look, thanks so much for
32:14
coming on, Rick. It's been an absolute pleasure.
32:17
Thanks for having me and and thanks for the podcast.
32:20
I hope it's I hope it's been valuable.
32:22
And you know, obviously I love the industry and whatever I can
32:25
do to highlight opportunity there, I will.
32:28
So thank you, Max. No, it's a pleasure.
32:30
You've got so much wisdom and I love listening to you as well.
32:33
So look, please everyone like and subscribe to the Bio Hub and
32:36
thanks again, Rick. Thank you.
32:38
Take care. You too.